U.S. forces are now ready to act on any order by President Barack Obama to strike Syria, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Tuesday.

The U.S. Navy has four destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean Sea positioned within range of targets inside Syria, as well as U.S. warplanes in the region.

In an interview with BBC television during his visit to the southeast Asian nation of Brunei, Hagel predicted that U.S. intelligence agencies would soon conclude that last week’s deadly attack on civilians in a Damascus suburb was a chemical attack by Bashar Assad’s government.

“I think it’s pretty clear that chemical weapons were used against people in Syria,” he said. “I think the intelligence will conclude that it wasn’t the (Syria) rebels who used it, and there’ll probably be pretty good intelligence to show is that the Syria government was responsible – but we’ll allow the time to come together to provide that information.”